


colossus

by tarcanza



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Pining, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29657142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarcanza/pseuds/tarcanza
Summary: Patrick Kane is loud and demands attention in a way that makes Jonny instinctively recoil—a walking, talking, “fuck-you," a near-parody of American cocksurety. He wears too much Old Spice and belts Taylor Swift in the shower and has the softest hands Jonny’s ever seen.Jonny’s never met someone who’s confused him so thoroughly in his entire life.
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 21
Kudos: 72





	1. Chapter 1

It’s like this: one last year of shitty beer, late-night ragers, and half-assed homework followed by a lazy summer, and then all of a sudden he’s no longer Jonathan Toews, promising Blackhawks prospect—he’s one half of Kane-and-Toews, fated saviors of hockey in Chicago. 

Jonny’s childhood dreams of making it to the NHL certainly didn’t include a metaphorical shotgun wedding to some 5’9, curly-haired American kid—but good players adjust, so Jonny swallows, slaps on his still stilted media smile, and commits. 

Patrick Kane has existed in fragments in Jonny’s mind for years. If he reaches back far enough, he can find a vision of a tiny body weaving through players twice his size followed by a vague sense of bafflement—a flash of yellow flip-flops and terrible hair. In more recent years, he can point to a low buzz of awareness he feels for any player he knows is good enough to make it. 

The full reality of him slams into Jonny like a bullet train. 

Patrick Kane is loud and demands attention in a way that makes Jonny instinctively recoil—a walking, talking, “fuck-you", a near-parody of American cocksurety. He wears too much Old Spice and belts Taylor Swift in the shower and has the softest hands Jonny’s ever seen. 

Jonny’s never met someone who’s confused him so thoroughly in his entire life. 

Turns out, they play _really_ good hockey together—the Chicago sports media take a collective sigh of relief, and Patrick and Jonny studiously avoid looking at each other while interviewers use metaphors that sound like innuendos.

The guys chirp them about it of course, because being a hockey player means you have a contractual obligation to be a dick. Jonny rolls his eyes through it and sees Patrick do the same. They don’t actually talk about any of it, though, and the truth of what’s going through Patrick’s head is as much of a mystery as the existence of people who legitimately like mushrooms. But he knows exactly what Patrick’s thinking on the ice, and that’s what really matters. 

Later, he finds out that Patrick _loves_ mushrooms. 

After the third time they scream at each other on the bench, the guys start eyeing the door to their shared hotel room like it’s a war zone.

“You sure you’re not gonna kill each other?” Sharpy half-jokes, brow creased like he’s two seconds away from delicately suggesting if they’ve perhaps, just _maybe_ considered asking to switch rooming assignments.

Jonny can feel his cheeks heat. He doesn’t know how to explain that their bench brawls don’t extend to their room, or at least not in the way everyone’s worried about. 

It’s more a war of attrition than anything. Patrick with the remote shoved down his pants watching MTV at full volume with a smug grin while Jonny bites back on his irritation, Jonny stretching out his limbs at the smallest hours of the night for longer than strictly necessary, just to hear Patrick shift in his bed and gnash his teeth. 

Quiet, unspoken jabs rather than the roaring curses they throw at each other during the heat of the game, blank faces with smirks hinting at the corners of their mouths rather than hectic-red cheeks and flashing eyes. 

But—

Patrick can be funny when he’s not being annoying, and he laughs at Jonny’s jokes, even though he claims it’s because they’re “ _unbelievably lame_ , _Toews”_ —all while having orange juice snorting out of his nose, so Jonny doesn’t believe that for a second. He’s evenly-matched with Jonny at SOCOM, has generally respectable opinions on the Kings, and he lets Jonny go over their games out loud for at least ten minutes before he lobs a pillow at him. 

So, it’s not all bad. 

Jonny snickers as Patrick squeezes out a line of toothpaste on his upper lip and does a scarily uncanny impression of Guy Fieri and thinks—no, not bad at all. 

"I can't tell if you're best friends or sworn enemies," Seabs mutters. 

"It's just how we are," Jonny says, and then stills. Because it's the first time he's thought of them as a 'we' instead of being told they are by everyone else. 

It makes his stomach swoop, and suddenly he's hit with the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the drop. 

Patrick’s dad is intimidating, his mother friendly, and his sisters beautiful—but Jonny thinks it’s probably smart if he takes that last one to the grave. The first time they all come to a game, Patrick lights it up, netting a sweet backhand past Theodore that makes Jonny’s neck go warm and beaming when his sisters tackle him afterwards and ruffle his hair. 

Dinner with Patrick’s family is awkward and nice at the same time, the way it always is when you spend time with pleasant people you don’t know well. He spends most of it fielding questions from Patrick’s father about their training regimen and trying to walk the fine line between speaking frequently enough to Patrick’s sisters so as not to be rude and not so much that he invites Patrick’s dark warning looks. There’s a conversation about Niagara Falls that serves as a thinly-veiled battle of patriotism, Patrick dimpling as he declares the American side superior and Jonny vehemently disagreeing. 

Patrick purses his lips. “Have you even been to the Buffalo side, man?” 

Jonny pauses. “No,” he admits, catching Patrick’s blonde sister snickering into her glass. Patrick squints at him suspiciously. 

“Jonny, have you ever been to the _Canadian_ side?”

Jonny coughs delicately, fiddling with his tie. “Ah, no.” 

“Well we’ll have to fix that,” Patrick’s mother chimes in, strategically cutting off Patrick’s outraged retort. “You should come visit us, Jonathan.” She smiles at Jonny, looking entirely too glamorous to have given birth to someone like Patrick Kane. 

The team’s off on an away trip the next morning to play the Leafs, and Jonny goes out with the boys when they win while Patrick mumbles something about being tired and disappears into their room. He’s laughing when Jonny stumbles back in, expression freezing in place when his eyes meet Jonny’s. Something sheepish flits across his face before he ducks his head down, phone pressed tight against his ear. “‘M gonna go now,” he says quickly. “Yeah, love you too.” Jonny wanders off to the bathroom feeling like a bull in a china shop. 

When Jonny walks out, Patrick’s crying. 

Despite his height, Jonny’s never seen Patrick look small before, and it doesn’t help that Patrick can’t seem to look him in the eye. It’s extra horrible because Patrick’s swallowing down these hitching gasps and digging his fingers into the sheets like he’s furious at his body for making them. He probably wishes Jonny would just go, but there’s nowhere for Jonny _to_ go. 

Jonny wavers for a few more seconds before he swallows, squares his shoulders, and climbs into bed, snagging the remote off the nightstand on the way. He flips it to MTV and ignores the way Patrick’s head snaps towards his, and picks up his book and pretends to read. 

“My family is awesome.” It comes out a few minutes later, tense and defensive. Jonny flips a page and forces himself to keep looking down. 

“I agree,” he says, keeping his voice steady. 

“I’m not embarrassed,” Patrick says, the slight wobble in his voice betraying his otherwise mutinous tone. 

“You shouldn’t be,” Jonny says lightly. He can feel Patrick’s faltering gaze, defiance deflating out of him like someone's poked a hole in his side. 

“I miss them,” Patrick says quietly a few minutes later. 

“I know,” Jonny says softly, raising his head to meet Patrick’s gaze head-on, and Patrick’s face smooths out when he realizes Jonny’s telling the truth. They sit in silence for a while, a shrill voice nattering from the TV and snatches of laughter filling the space between them. Jonny looks at his suitcase, at the scratchy white sheets, at the bruise blooming at the top of his thigh. 

For a moment, he feels suddenly and impossibly young.

“Are you guys friends?”

It’s a girl this time, young and chubby-faced, clutching a Toews jersey in her equally chubby fist. Her eyes are wide and brown and full of hope. Jonny takes a split-second to think before he smiles. “Yeah,” he says, voice sticking to the back of his throat. “We’re in it together.” He adds a light laugh at the end, and the girl beams. 

_Friend_ sits strangely in his mouth, too little and not enough all at once. The truth is, Jonny never got the option of deciding if he wants to be friends with Patrick or not, because everyone decided they have to be. 

Skittering heat, biting irritation, flashes of fondness that hit him so hard the air squeezes out of his lungs—a patchwork of feelings that have no business coexisting held together by a fraying thread.

Is that friendship? 

One day, Patrick pisses next to him while Jonny brushes his teeth, eyes drawn into a quick side glance when Patrick sighs, deep and long. His head’s lolling back, lids heavy with sleep and hair mussed.

Jonny can feel the urge to touch him itching under his skin until he’s sick with it, even with the sound of Patrick’s piss hitting the water echoing in his ear. 

He thinks then that maybe it’s safer if he doesn’t figure it out. 


	2. Chapter 2

When Jonny sprains his knee, Patrick shows up at Seabs’ with a can of flat Diet Coke, Sour-Patch Kids, and a card that says “ _Fuck! That must’ve hurt. Get well soon!”_

“Suzie said it would be rude to show up empty-handed, so,” Patrick rushes out, ears turning an interesting shade of pink as Jonny flips the card over. 

“So you terrorized the nearest CVS?” Jonny asks lightly, grinning when Patrick scowls, hoping Patrick doesn’t notice the way his heart is hammering in his chest. 

They sit side-by-side on the couch and watch the Flyers wreck the Rangers, wordlessly passing the bag of Sour-Patch Kids back and forth until Jonny’s tongue is numb and fingertips sticky. Jonny doesn’t like Diet Coke even when it’s fresh out of the fridge, but when Patrick starts licking his fingers clean, he has no choice but to pop the tab open and take a swig just to wet his throat. 

They bicker about everything from line formations to tape jobs because it’s easy and don’t talk about Jonny’s leg because it’s hard. 

“Oh look, it’s you,” Jonny smirks when the camera pans to a little boy with curly blonde hair in a Briere jersey whooping in his seat. Patrick predictably punches him in the arm, but only about a third as hard as he deserves. 

There’s a moment of quiet just before Patrick leaves, when the TV’s blinked off and there’s a snag in the conversation that stills to a lull. He can see Patrick worry his bottom lip with his teeth, and when he opens his mouth, Jonny’s scared. 

“I’ll see you soon, Tazer,” Patrick says eventually, and the words are light but the way they’re said is heavy. Jonny swallows. 

“Yeah,” he says back, meeting Patrick’s eyes. “You will.” Patrick nods, and Jonny knows he understands that it’s a promise. 

It turns out recovering from an injury as a professional athlete is a lot of work. 

“Sorry, bud,” Seabs says with a grimace as he drops Jonny with the physical therapist before heading to practice, and Jonny dutifully quirks a _what-can-you-do_ smile back, but—

Getting better is something he can work towards, something with an action plan and goals. The trainers are in constant contact with him, giving him specialized rehabilitation exercises to do and recovery-specific meal plans. Plus, they let Jonny ask as many questions as he wants. 

“Kid,” Rob says sharply after Jonny finishes grilling him for extra rehab exercises over the phone. “Don’t overdo it, okay? You’re doing great but you don’t want to re-injure yourself. Stick to the plan, got it?”

“Okay,” Jonny responds sheepishly, glancing over the pdf of exercises Rob had emailed over. Rob said to just pick 3, but—

Jonny wants to do them all.

Pushing himself at physio, sticking to the new meal plan, exercising—that isn’t the problem. It’s the restraint piece that’s getting to him. 

But that just makes it Jonny’s new challenge. 

And if there’s anything Jonny’s good at in this world, it’s rising to meet a challenge. 

He gets back on the ice in record time, slips back into the lineup like nothing ever happened, puts up points like no one’s business, and—

It’s not enough. 

Sees Patrick zip past two defenders and bank one in glove-side and knows no matter what he does—

It’s not enough. 

Jonny’s somehow both shocked and not shocked that his happiness at Patrick getting the Calder just edges out his own bitter disappointment. 

The media titters when Patrick forgets to thank Jonny in his acceptance speech, but he proves them wrong with a loud and vocal expression of gratitude to a large crowd of fans that makes Jonny duck his face. In private, he imparts a small, soft smile and squeeze of the shoulder, and Jonny can feel heat punch through his cheeks at the touch. 

There's a part of him that's worried about Patrick's reaction when he’s given the captaincy—as much as the media runs the hockey marriage through-line, they sure like to stoke the flames of unspoken competition between them. 

Patrick just smirks at Jonny. "Looks like you have a league-mandated permit to be a bossy asshole now," he says, reaching up to ruffle Jonny’s hair with a ferocity that leaves it sticking up at angles Jonny can’t possibly flatten out without the help of a hairbrush. 

Jonny bats his hand away and scowls, but when Patrick turns his head, he smiles. 

Patrick starts picking up more. 

It’s like his body gets this itch after he lights it up on the ice, a certain need to release the pent-up energy, demanding a reward. Jonny sees it in the suggestive way his fingers graze down girls’ arms at the bars afterwards, eyes skirting in a hot line from their faces to the soft rise of their breasts. 

“You gonna call her Kaner, show her a good time?” Sharpy leers at Patrick while a new round of titters break out. 

Jonny can’t help himself, he has to look up, has to _see_ —

Patrick smirks, pocketing the slip of paper with the phone number on it. “Night’s still young boys, gotta keep my options open.” He drags the rim of his beer bottle across the inside of his bottom lip, leaving it pink and shiny. He isn’t even drinking the beer, just sliding the glass over skin, had to keep his mouth busy, _always_ touching something—

Jonny looks away. 

“Aw, look, Tazer’s jealous,” someone says. Steeger, maybe, or Bur. Jonny doesn’t know, too busy trying to ignore the static starting to buzz in his head. “Maybe the day you grow a head full of blonde curls, the girls will like you too, Toes,” Sharpy throws in, snickering, ruffling his hands through Jonny’s short brown hair while Jonny pinches him on the thigh so hard he yelps.

_Jealous_. 

He tries the word on, feels out the shape, lets it slip around until he can’t stand the taste of it. 

Takes a drink. Washes it away. 

It takes until somewhere during that second year for Patrick to jab at his light switch, sit up in bed, and level a glare at Jonny. “Can you please stop fucking moving?” He grits out, voice cracking from irritation and the late hour. Jonny’s head snaps towards Patrick’s and he freezes. 

“Sorry,” he says, and maybe the look on his face matches how small his voice comes out and broadcasts the pit of guilt sitting in his stomach, because Patrick’s shoulders drop and his fingers start to pluck at the tassels of the decorative pillow like he needs a way to occupy his hands. 

“It’s—” he starts, clearing his throat. “S’fine, just. You’re giving me second-hand anxiety.” 

"Sorry," Jonny repeats dully, and Patrick's shoulders drop further. He opens his mouth and then shuts it abruptly before there's a soft click, and the room goes black. 

Jonny hears Patrick punch his pillow a few times and sigh, and then there’s the muffled sound of a body hitting the mattress. Jonny tries to keep still for the rest of the night. 

He doesn’t sleep. 

Again. 

A few weeks later, they trounce the Wild, 7-1. Jonny watches the Sportsnet coverage later that night while Patrick’s in the bathroom. “Kane and Toews had a good night,” one of the pundits starts, and Jonny’s hand hardly twitches around the remote. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](https://tarcanza.tumblr.com/) for updates and also on [twitter](https://twitter.com/tarcanza). Come say hi!


End file.
